Crowell, Mayme Roberson

ORAL HISTORY OF MAYME ROBERSON CROWELL
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
December 20, 2012
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is December 20, 2012, and I am at the home of Mayme Roberson Crowell, here in Oak Ridge. Mrs. Crowell, thank you for taking time to speak with us --
MRS. CROWELL: Thank you for coming.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and if tomorrow is the end of the world, it's been nice knowing you.
MRS. CROWELL: True, true. I wonder if this CD, or whatever, will be finished by the end of the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: If the world ends tomorrow, no, it won't --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I can tell you that. Well, let's talk about you a little bit. Let's go back to the very beginning. Why don't you tell me about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I was born on a farm in Candler, North Carolina, which is near Asheville, North Carolina. My father was a school superintendent there. He had a farm on the side, which he had inherited from his father. I lived there until I graduated from high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: In Candler?
MRS. CROWELL: In Candler. I went to Candler Elementary School, and then Candler Elementary consolidated with Sand Hill School, and that became Enka High School, so I actually graduated and went the last two years to Enka High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's interesting that you were born in Candler. I interviewed a gentleman two days ago here in Oak Ridge who was born in Candler and raised on a farm.
MRS. CROWELL: Might it possibly have been Wayne Clark?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, it was Wayne. It was Wayne. It sure was.
MRS. CROWELL: Wayne Clark and I have some things in our background --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that we know about. Yeah, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, anyway, so you went to school there; what did your mom and dad do?
MRS. CROWELL: My mother was a teacher before my brother, who was five and a half years older than me, was born. After the children were born, she remained a stay-at-home housewife.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: My father was a school superintendent there in Buncombe County for 34 years. There is a high school named for him near Biltmore.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: It's the T.C. Roberson High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's an awfully nice legacy, isn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: I think so. Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said you had a brother.
MRS. CROWELL: I had a brother, five and a half years older than I. His name was Joe, and he became a dentist there in Biltmore --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- in North Carolina.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: He went to the University of North Carolina, I went to Duke, and there was always rivalry, as my mother said when they played basketball, "It doesn't matter who wins."
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated high school, and then you went to Duke?
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What were you going to study?
MRS. CROWELL: Initially, my father wanted me to go to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. That was the women's college at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I rebelled somewhat at that. I wanted to go where I could get the opinions of the male, as well as the female, and I wanted to go to Duke. I, in high school, wrote an essay for the American Medical Association on the perils of socialized medicine --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I won the national -- so, I won a large scholarship, and my father said, "Okay, you can go to Duke."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: You have to understand my father's position. He had a son already in dental school at that point --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and there was only so much money. School superintendents didn't make a lot back then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you were able to go to Duke --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, and --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but now what --
MRS. CROWELL: -- I lived through Sputnik in 1957. That was the year I graduated from high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: If you had any inkling to science, they wanted you to go into science at that time, and it was sort of a patriotic thing to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, at Duke, I spent two days taking exams as to which I should do, go into science or go into liberal arts --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and when I walked in the next day, they said, "You can do either. You'll be fine," so I decided to major in English, which I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: I had already met my future husband in high school, so I decided to graduate, for two reasons, in three years: so we could get married, and also to save my father lots of money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I worked in the Divinity School Library at Duke, met a lot of ministers, an interesting group of people, and graduated in 1960, even though I was in the Class of 1961.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right, and with an English degree.
MRS. CROWELL: With an English degree, that's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what did you do? Did you get a job?
MRS. CROWELL: I did. Cary was a little bedroom town back at that time, about 5,000 people. Would you believe it's over 100,000 now?
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, a little bedroom town next to Raleigh. While my husband was getting his master's degree, I taught English in high school, junior and senior English, at Cary High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- High School, which is now a junior high, I think.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It was a new school at that point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly. So, you taught English --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- high school English --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- while your husband was finishing his master's?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so he finishes his master's, and --
MRS. CROWELL: Right. His undergraduate degree was in nuclear engineering and his master's was in math, and he interviewed at the National Security Agency in D.C., a couple of other places, and Oak Ridge --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and he chose Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what year did you move to Oak Ridge?
MRS. CROWELL: I moved here in October of 1962 --
MR. MCDANIEL: In '62.
MRS. CROWELL: -- with a six-month-old child.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. So, tell me about coming to Oak Ridge. Had you ever been to Oak Ridge? Did you all come to interview?
MRS. CROWELL: He came to interview --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- I did not come.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: When I was in high school in the tenth grade, we had a field trip to Oak Ridge, and I still have my eradiated dime that I got at the old museum. [Note: Atomic Energy Museum]
MR. MCDANIEL: The old museum in Jefferson.
MRS. CROWELL: Right. So, I had been to Oak Ridge but I knew nothing about Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: When I came, the first night we were here, we were down at the old Holiday Inn and, if you recall, there was an outdoor movie theater --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah --
MRS. CROWELL: -- right across --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- the Skyway.
MRS. CROWELL: -- whatever it was called --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so you could see the movie from our room, and then we turned on the TV and, lo and behold, there was Cas Walker, and I thought, "Oh, my. I don't know about this place."
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny, how funny.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, we moved here and moved to a rental place in West Village on Bryn Mawr Circle, and then, subsequently, I had another child. With two children, somehow a two-bedroom home was just not quite big enough, so I started looking around and found a place at 108 Nebraska, and we bought there when our children were preschoolers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Now, did you and your husband, when you moved to Oak Ridge, did you think it was going to be long-term or short-term, or did you have any idea?
MRS. CROWELL: We really didn't have any idea. I can remember, though, about six months after we were here, he woke up in the middle of the night with this a-ha feeling, and he had solved some sort of mathematical problem in operations out at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I guess, at that point, we were thinking, "Well, I guess we'll stay here for a while."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and that's where he worked, he worked at K-25 --
MRS. CROWELL: At that time --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- at that time.
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. That Computer Center that's out there in front of K-25 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- which actually served --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and still serves, I guess -- I don't know if it's still -- anyway, it served all three plants at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. So, you had two children --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you bought a house on Nebraska, and by now it's late '60s, I imagine.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, it's '65. March of '65 is when we bought the house, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. So, did you go to work right away, or --
MRS. CROWELL: No, no, I --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you just --
MRS. CROWELL: -- stayed home. Well, I went back to the University of Tennessee to get a Master's degree.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Some of my friends were going out once a week to play bridge. Well, I went out once a week to go to class.
MR. MCDANIEL: Go to class, right.
MRS. CROWELL: It took a while. I didn't get the degree until 1967, and then, after that, I still -- well, I worked part-time in a project out in Oliver Springs. It was a project that took people who had dropped out of elementary school, and we were trying to teach them basic information, and I was a counselor to the group. We had about 25 people, and when Margaret Mead came here --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she chastised Oak Ridgers for not helping people outside of Oak Ridge, and I wanted to jump up and say to her, "There were a few of us who were working outside of Oak Ridge to help people."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: That program ended. There was something called the Manpower Development Program, and I guess Congress stopped it, and then another program came in called the JDPA, the Jobs Development Program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, that ended, and, when that ended, I stayed home another year, and then I applied to ORAU, Oak Ridge Associated Universities --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I worked at the Training and Technology Project; that was a skills training program.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was TAT, wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: TAT, a skills training program. We had glass blowing, electronics, physical testing, machining, drafting --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- a lot of skills, and a lot of young people, men --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because as the people at Y-12 said, "There is no change room for the women," but we did get a few women in --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- in the electronics area --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and, later, we got some women even into the welding area.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, TAT was a training program --
MRS. CROWELL: Correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and it was designed, and you can tell me more about this, but as I recall it was kind of a high-end vocational program --
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was for maybe people who had just gotten out of high school, or had been in the workplace a little while and didn't have much direction really, is that correct?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. It all started when a fellow that worked for ORAU, who is now deceased, Wendell Russell, worked with the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that looked at the situation where Y-12 was now not doing any weapons work, per se, but they had all of these master machinists, welders, other people who could teach, and perhaps the facilities could be used.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, it was a joint operation between the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- to use the Department of Energy's facilities to help the Department of Labor to put people in specific jobs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Not everyone was a graduate of high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: We had a GED program there that helped people to become graduates, but the training itself was very technically oriented toward math and toward the particular skill set that they were learning.
MR. MCDANIEL: You probably had some of the best master craftsmen in the world there --
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, we did.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- teaching these courses, didn't they?
MRS. CROWELL: We did, and they were all fellows --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but interesting fellows that had, as you say, been master craftsmen, and these students, to me, they were kids, although I was young at the time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- were learning from --
MR. MCDANIEL: The best.
MRS. CROWELL: -- the masters, from the best.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Right, and we placed these people. I worked in guidance and placement, and then later as a research associate, but we placed these people in jobs all around the country.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Y-12 didn't hire them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Didn't hire them? Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Many of them came back to Y-12 later on --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but they were placed in shipbuilding places in Norfolk or in Mississippi. We filled every glass blowing job you could think of, and we stopped glass blowing, but machining, welding, electronics, physical testing all went on continually.
MR. MCDANIEL: These jobs were good, high-paying, I mean --
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, they were good, high-paying jobs.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- good jobs.
MRS. CROWELL: In fact, I mentioned that later I became a research associate, and one of the tasks that I had, along with two or three others, was to interview people who had gone through the program, and we interviewed them five years later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: We also had records. We could get their Social Security records to see how much they were earning and such, and what we found was that their earnings in paying back to the IRS paid for their training.
MR. MCDANIEL: Their training, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, these students didn't have to pay for this training? It was provided by the government?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. Now, later on, there were some smaller government entities, such as states, or the city of Chicago that paid their way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, for some.
MRS. CROWELL: -- for some of them because they had to travel here and such.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how many students did you have, I mean for the --
MRS. CROWELL: At any --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- how long did the program last, first?
MRS. CROWELL: -- I believe about six years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we had at any one time probably 150 students there. Overall, I would say well over 2,500 graduates.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: What happened eventually is the federal government had us looking for what I used to call “pink-eyed elephants with one foot.” I mean there were so many requirements that we had to meet, and we had to travel. I interviewed people around the area to come. We had to travel, and finding the people that the government, the Department of Labor in this case --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- wanted to train became just an impossible situation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because they had very specific ideas of who they wanted for this program --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and how could you find those people?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, staff went out and interviewed and tried to find them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Situation was prohibitive.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: But it lasted, and we did a good job for a lot of people, and a lot of people earned their GEDs, and there were a lot of people who came back to Oak Ridge. I've even met some of these people --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- who came back to Oak Ridge after working somewhere else, and then they were hired by Y-12 later, when work --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- became available.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said it lasted about six years. What timeframe was this, late '60s, early '70s? Was it in the '70s?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. It was about '66 or so, through '73 or '74, or something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, and it was an excellent program. It helped a lot of people in a lot of ways, not just to get a job but improved their morale, their ego. They really could do this, you know?
MR. MCDANIEL: Give them confidence in life --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, they really could do this.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I guess. Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We kept a lot of records. We tested those poor people. Oh, we tested them, and we were required to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It was just the requirement.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were working for ORAU at the time.
MRS. CROWELL: I was.
MR. MCDANIEL: They were managing this program --
MRS. CROWELL: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- is that what it was?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, actually, ORAU and Union Carbide --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but I worked for ORAU, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: As I say, we kept a lot of records, and I imagine ORAU still has those records.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was housed at Y-12, is that correct?
MRS. CROWELL: It was, in a building to the east, 9703, or something like that. All I remember is when you walked in the Y-12 gate, it was like there was a wind tunnel coming down the other side in the winter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, it was so cold. Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so cold.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what did you do when that program ended --
MRS. CROWELL: Well --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- professionally?
MRS. CROWELL: -- professionally, my husband took the job of computer center director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and we left in August of '75. I guess I should say during those years that I worked at TAT, I worked part-time. I was not a full-time person…
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because I would go pick up my children, and in the ORAU Human Resources Department, there was a lady there, Margaret Smith, and every time I would walk in, she would say, "Are you coming or are you going?" because I took off December, and I took off the summer to be with my children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I had only worked at ORAU part-time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, my husband took the job and he had worked at Union Carbide for many years. He was assured that he would have his job when he came back. In my case, I had only worked part-time so I was not assured --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so that was just the way it was then.
[Phone ringing]
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Is that me or you? Somebody's --
MRS. CROWELL: That's mine --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- Oh.
MRS. CROWELL: -- I think, over there --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that's okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: That's just a text. Anyway, when he took the job --
MR. MCDANIEL: So, in '75, he got a job --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yes. Actually, it was the Department of Energy who sent us to Vienna Austria. He was, how to say it, moved there, or so to speak.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, so we left with the children, who were early teens at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- 13 and 15, and lived near the Wienerwald for two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what was the name of that again?
MRS. CROWELL: Wienerwald, the Vienna Woods.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay?
MR. MCDANIEL: I wanted to ask that for my transcriptionists. They're going to want to know that.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I understand. We learned German, although my husband's work was always in English, but we lived, what we call, on the economy. We didn't live with other U.S. citizens. We wanted to have the experience, I suppose, of the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so, we lived on elf Dirmark Steingasse (German), which is 11, by the way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and Dirmark Steinegasse (German) is just the name of a street.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, the children went to the American International School, which is an excellent school with young teachers, just really active with the kids, and took fieldtrips and so forth. I had my parents send over Euro passes for the girls and myself. So, in the breaks, the summer and the winter break, we would travel, oh, out from Vienna to Italy, or out from Vienna to Spain, or out from Vienna to --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and the whole family traveled to England and then Scotland, and Wales one time, and another summer we went to Norway and Sweden, and such. So, we had just a wonderful experience there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
[Side Conversation]
MRS. CROWELL: Sorry.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's all right. That's quite all right. So, how long were you there?
MRS. CROWELL: Two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Two years?
MRS. CROWELL: Right. Did a lot of traveling. The school took trips to Russia. I went with my older daughter and my husband went with the younger daughter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: So, we had a lot of travel experiences.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: My husband and I went to Turkey once.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was an eventful two years, wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: It was, and we met a lot of interesting people at the IAEA from different places.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: My husband's boss was from Russia, and there was something called a UN Women's Guild, so you could meet others. Now, I did not work there. I couldn't work there. Austria doesn't allow the spouse of a foreign worker to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I just was the travel agent, and learned German so I could put food on the table and take the kids to the doctor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, my goodness. So, that sounds very exciting.
MRS. CROWELL: It was.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet it was a great experience for your kids, especially at that age, because they were old enough to be able to appreciate it, weren't they?
MRS. CROWELL: They were. The younger one was a little young, she was 11 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but they were entering what I call in children growing up, girls especially, the fluff area --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- where girls get so interested in, "How I look and what I say," or, "Are the boys watching me?" --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that my children didn't really enter that thing. They were too busy going from place to place --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and meeting new people. It was an American International School, but they weren't all Americans. In fact, they still correspond with a Swedish girl --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and hope to go visit her sometime. She visited us here --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow. Wow --
MRS. CROWELL: -- so it was fun.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that's great.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so you stayed there for two years, and then I guess his job was up or over, or --
MRS. CROWELL: Well, he --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- decided to make a change?
MRS. CROWELL: -- would have liked to have stayed longer, but I felt that the children, who were at that point in the ninth and tenth grades, needed the experience of high school here in order to enter college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I was very insistent on our coming back, but he would have liked to have stayed. He could have stayed up to five years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and actually "retired" from there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: But no, we didn't do that. We came back --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, you came back.
MRS. CROWELL: -- by way of Greece, by the way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because our goods were on a ship that was gonna take a month to get here, so we decided to go to Greece --
MR. MCDANIEL: To Greece, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so the children got back and they had these beautiful tans, and they were asked, "Where did you get your tan?" and they'd whisper, "Greece," because everybody had gone to Myrtle Beach or other places.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: It was a bit hard for them to re-assimilate here, especially with girls. You have boys, I think. But with girls, they sort of form cliques, and you have to sort of work into those cliques once again.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: But some of the girls accepted them, and it was -- now, for me, it was rough because our shipment on the way back on the boat, or the big ship, had a hole in the ship's container, so our things were wet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MRS. CROWELL: I had to go through things item by item for insurance purposes, and how much was this, and it took all of eight or nine months to get that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- straightened out.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, my husband was back at work.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, when you moved back to Oak Ridge, he went back to work for --
MRS. CROWELL: At that time, it was for the Physics Division within the Computer Center, and they served ORNL, K-25, and Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Where did you all move? Where did you live?
MRS. CROWELL: Well --
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you still have your house?
MRS. CROWELL: -- we still had the house. In fact, it might be interesting to note that the brother of --
MR. MCDANIEL: That was at 108 Nebraska?
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. The brother of Pat Postma was graduating from the University of North Carolina with a doctorate in math just as we left, so he and his wife, Janelle -- Janelle Dunigan she was, and Tom Postma -- rented our house while we were gone --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so, when we came back, I think they built over in Briarcliff or somewhere, and later had a child, who was a very good tennis player.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh good, good, so you moved back into your house on Nebraska --
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and you spent nine months trying to dry everything out --
MRS. CROWELL: -- and fill out paperwork.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- so to speak, fill out paperwork. Your husband went back to work, your kids got back in school.
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, it took you a year to settle back in --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- so to speak.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and then I showed up at ORAU's door once again, and they said, "Yes, we have work for you to do." So, I worked in a program called the Assessment and Field Support Program. It was DOE-sponsored, and most of my work had to do with research in both manpower development and some of it in technical fields, such as physics and such.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: But then, later -- I was still working part-time, by the way.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I worked part-time until my children finished high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: High school.
MRS. CROWELL: I used to tell people, "I work part-time not so much for me, but I didn't want to miss the children growing up."
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, of course, of course.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I was still working part-time, and they allowed me to work. ORAU was a very good employer; allowed me to work part-time. I had the best of both worlds --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so I applaud them for that. Now, we part-timers did band together once and tried to get some benefits, and we did get them --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but then, by that time, I was ready to work full-time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay, I see, I see. So, you worked part-time for a while, and then, when the kids graduated or got out of high school --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you decided you wanted to work full-time.
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it a new project, or the same project?
MRS. CROWELL: It was the same for a while, and then, later, it was a new -- well, it was a year-old project, I guess. They had brought here a fellow, Boyd Schultz, whose wife actually was from the area and who was one of Admiral Rickover's boys -- MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who started the program which was the Technical Assistance Program for Safety, Health, and Quality Assurance, TAPSHQA, for short, and it was a program -- back during the days of the Tiger Teams and the technical safety appraisals, we supplied people to assess DOE facilities.
MR. MCDANIEL: Explain the Tiger Teams.
MRS. CROWELL: Tiger Teams were teams that went into DOE contractor locations and checked on all phases of their operations, from the physics, the chemistry, the quality assurance, the industrial safety, on and on. There were about 13 people on each Tiger Team. Then, they wrote a report for the Department of Energy, and, in this report, there were certain things that needed to be "fixed" or there were certain things that were --
MR. MCDANIEL: Efficient.
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah, that were deficient, or other things that were exceptional, though --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so they tried to look at all sides of the operation.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was in the '80s --
MRS. CROWELL: This was in the mid --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- mid-'80s.
MRS. CROWELL: -- '80s. It began about '84, I think, or so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, Boyd had already retired from Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and he was ready to retire here, so ORAU brought in a gentleman from Louisiana State University, Dr. John Courtney, one summer, and he taught me all I needed to know about nuclear criticality safety, so I became "a nuclear criticality safety professional."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: There aren't too many of those in this world --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and one of the problems was that most of them were getting ready to retire, so we needed to train more people in order for many of the Department of Energy facilities to continue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, anyway, he "trained" me, and then I became the director of the program, and the program supplied engineers and scientists and technicians to practically all of the DOE and DOE contractors across the U.S.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I traveled a lot with this, going to the contractor sites and to the Department of Energy regional offices.
MR. MCDANIEL: But by now, your kids were in college or out --
MRS. CROWELL: They were --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- on their own.
MRS. CROWELL: -- in college. They were in college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: One graduated in -- well, let me think a minute -- '84, and the other one in '85 from college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: The older one in '84 graduated from Duke, and the younger one in '85 graduated from the University of South Carolina, and then both of them went on to graduate school after that, so they were --
MR. MCDANIEL: They were gone --
MRS. CROWELL: -- out of the nest.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- out of the nest, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Out of the nest, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you felt comfortable traveling --
MRS. CROWELL: Yes, right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- at that point, because of the kids, anyway?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, right, and in some cases I would travel where the kids were.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the reason I traveled was to find out what these contractors and regional offices needed in terms of short-term people or consultants. Short-term for them, by the way, was anywhere from three weeks to five years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- okay? Did a lot of traveling to D.C., as well - to both of the Germantown and the Forrestall building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I would also travel to professional societies -- the American Nuclear Society, American Physics Society -- because I needed to beef up my cadre of individuals who could be supplied to do this particular work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now let me ask you a question: go back and tell me the name, what he taught you that summer, what was that?
MRS. CROWELL: Nuclear criticality safety.
MR. MCDANIEL: What exactly is that? I mean what --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- would the person that became educated in that field, what is their area of expertise.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. Well, let's start with the fact that you want a criticality to occur in a reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It's contained, and that's it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: But there are a lot of places that a criticality can occur that you don't want it to happen, such as in a facility where you are producing uranium fuel, or plutonium --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- or putting together weapons, or whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the nuclear criticality safety person actually is the person who surveyed these facilities, and in most cases, they were production facilities --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- to determine that they were safe from a criticality ever occurring. At the time I became one, there were probably 75 people in all of the U.S. --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who did this sort of thing, of which more than half of them were going to retire in the next two to five years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the Department of Energy realized they had a manpower problem --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and they were trying to find ways to alleviate this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, in your position here as the director, did you actually do training or did you run a program that trained, oversaw a program that trained?
MRS. CROWELL: I did not train. I did not oversee a program that trained. What I did was become one and work with the people that were already in the field --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and help them to determine how best to train.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, how to say it, there are computer codes connected with this, and we did conduct some of that code training --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that was it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right, so how long did you do that job?
MRS. CROWELL: I was there until 1998, when I retired.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. So, you retired in '98.
MRS. CROWELL: Right, in March of '98.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, let's go back when you first came to Oak Ridge. Let's talk about Oak Ridge as a community, as a city.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Talk about, a little bit -- I know you were involved with your kids and your work part-time, but I imagine you were involved in the community, as well, some.
MRS. CROWELL: I was, and with the church --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- which was also involved in the community. What I remember about those days was I had young children, and I remember my church, you could go and they would take care of your children while you went somewhere for an hour, and I thought that was the best thing that ever happened.
MR. MCDANIEL: I think they call that Mother's Day Out now --
MRS. CROWELL: -- oh, they didn't call it that then.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- or something.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know what it was called --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: At the Y, the Y had a newcomer's group, and I went to that. Still know a lot of people from --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, from that --
MRS. CROWELL: -- that particular - Roberta Sommerfield, for example, was in that particular group. So, the Y helped some of us newcomers to become oriented to the city and learn about the past.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, still sticking with the Y, there was a time back then when the Y was in an old barracks building and they wanted to build a new one. We had this study done. I was on the Y board for a while, and we had this study done and they said, "This community can't support a new building," and it made us all very angry, and we said, "We'll show you." So, we did, and we who were on the board went out to individual homes and told them what our needs were, and how we'd like to have a new Y, and then Nancy Stanley went to the Kresge Foundation and they gave us money, and the Y building is here now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: So, we showed those people that made that study.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, that was my experiences with the Y. I didn't join some of the other groups, like bridge, but I did help to set up the Nearly New, which Marlys Bigelow spearheaded. But, it worked out well. Other things at that time were AAUW, the American Association of University Women. There was a lady, Evelyn Ellingson, who now lives at NHC --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who was sort of my mentor to join that group. That group's purpose is education; in particular, it's education beyond the high school level, and, in particular, it's education for graduate degrees. For example, Rachael Carson was given money for her environmental work from AAUW. Marie Curie, AAUW bought her uranium that she used.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: So it has a long history. Back in the 1800s, 1880s, was when it began.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, there was a chapter in Oak Ridge?
MRS. CROWELL: Yes, it's an Oak Ridge Branch. We still have one. I've been president off and on during several years, and right now, where we place our money is we give scholarships to the Roane State Community College women who are re-entering. They have to be 25 years old and re-entering the workforce. This year we had 63 applications of which we had to choose 4 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we also give each year $500.00 to the national association, which supplies graduate work scholarships. So, anyway, AAUW became an organization that I belong to, and I guess we were all from different places from around the country, and it was interesting. You had friends that you met, either through your children or church or work or whatever, and we'd get together for dinner parties, maybe 8 or 12 people --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- a dinner party, and it was interesting learning about how others grew up, came here, what they did here, and so forth.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- you made your own entertainment at that point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, are you talking about in the '60s?
MRS. CROWELL: I'm talking about in the '60s and the '70s, yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, '60s and '70s.
MRS. CROWELL: -- the early '70s, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Right. The church that we belonged to decided to build an educational building back at that time, and I can remember a dinner party where we had people, some were for and some were against and it was a very contentious --
MR. MCDANIEL: A contentious dinner.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that's just the way it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was that common, the dinner parties, because I've had other people tell me that they did that, as well, they had dinner parties.
MRS. CROWELL: It seemed to me, at least among the people that I associated with, it was quite common.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: There weren't as many restaurants then. I mean we didn't have all these fast food places --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and people entertained in their homes more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: One of the things that I found most interesting about Oak Ridge, you would see the outside of the home, and it probably was a '40s put-together-quickly home, and you go inside and, "Oh my goodness," the paintings, the furniture, it was just --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, it was a D house that was, you know --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- inside was, you know --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, just beautiful, beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- wow.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the dinner parties were a good way of meeting other people, and there were always these parties at the Country Club when somebody would be leaving from the computer section, and they came and they went like you wouldn't believe.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: One of my fondest memories of that is there was a lady and her husband, who later ended up at IAEA - Marion and Jim Gilchrest, they had ten children -- nine boys and one girl.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right.
MRS. CROWELL: This lady showed up at those dinner parties, fingernails polished, oh, beautiful hair, too, and I thought, "Ten children, how do you do it?" I was frazzled with two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my goodness, my goodness. That's probably the only time she got to get out.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, I don't know. I remember in Vienna, when we went and she invited us over, they had an apartment that had been a chemistry factory, and the boardroom table was their dining room table.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Oh my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: I guess in a way that was one way that they could educate all those children, because the IAEA did give you money to send your children either to school or if you wanted to send them back to the U.S. --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- to college, yeah, and he stayed on and went to UNIDO after that, so another UN organization that did the same thing, so that was good for their family --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, absolutely.
MRS. CROWELL: -- very good for their family, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: After you came back from Vienna, your daughters were in high school --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- talk a little bit about the schools here in Oak Ridge.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay, yeah. One of the reasons we came to Oak Ridge was the schools. When we looked for a house, we thought about moving outside of Oak Ridge, and it was the school system that made us stay here. Linden Elementary had just opened up, and that was an excellent school. In fact, the PE teacher lives next door to us now. She's retired, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- anyway, then junior high was not --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that Miss Hale?
MRS. CROWELL: -- yes, Holt Hale --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- Shirley Holt Hale.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah. Junior high, we sort of missed by being away --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so, in fact, we sort of missed it totally because, when my children came back, they knew German, and they went to the high school to take German --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: -- even though one of them was in junior high, so she didn't spend that much time at the junior high.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, so I guess I'd have to talk more about the high school. I really appreciated the teachers there. I could name a few of them, especially this Bonita Albert and her math. Oh, my goodness. That woman would go 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, and if your child wanted --
MR. MCDANIEL: Help?
MRS. CROWELL: -- some extra tutoring, she was right there to help you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: There was a biology teacher, whose name I can't think of right now, that was just wonderful, too. Barbara Bennett was a teacher who set up a program called “You and the Constitution,” or something like that. It was a special class, and my younger daughter, that was what she wanted, I mean it was just --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- like it was a class made to order for her, and got her into the area of the law. My younger daughter got her law degree from UNC later on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, the older daughter was just turned on by science, and people like Dewey Bilbrey and somebody that taught with him that I can't remember --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and the math people just really turned her on. She later got a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Virginia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the schools just made learning fun, and interesting and enjoyable --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, and prepared them for --
MRS. CROWELL: -- well, prepared them well, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- yeah, prepared them well.
MRS. CROWELL: When my older daughter entered Duke, she went with credits from the AP course. When my younger daughter went to Center College, that was where she went before --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she went to the University of South Carolina --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she was well prepared, too, and I can't say enough about the school system. It's just wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, it's interesting, and I'll take a break here to talk about that. My oldest son is a freshman this year. When we were meeting, they had meeting with the parents for upcoming freshmen, you know, incoming freshmen, and it was really interesting the way that they talked about their four years and what to expect each year, and one of the things that really stood out for me was by the time the student graduated high school, they wanted their first year of college to be easy. They wanted them to be so prepared and so well prepared, that there are enough issues that a student leaving home and going to college for the first year has to face; they didn't want them to have to worry about academics so much, and that's what they said, many students have said, "My freshman year of college compared to my junior and senior year of high school was easy," you know?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, I thought that was really interesting.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, they do prepare them well, I think --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MRS. CROWELL: -- at least in both of my daughters' cases.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: They prepared them well.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. So, after they left and your kids went off to college, were you still involved in community activities?
MRS. CROWELL: I was, I was. I continued with AAUW, still continued with my church, First United Methodist, and was with the Y for a while, not the whole time but for a while. Yes, so those were my major activities.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said you retired in '98?
MRS. CROWELL: I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so what have you done since retirement?
MRS. CROWELL: I've become a professional volunteer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Talk about that a little bit.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, let's see. Early on, it was just before I retired that ORICL began.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know if you know the history of that or not, but they sent out a letter if you were interested, and they thought they'd have about 50 people down at the old Roane State place on the Turnpike, and over 250 showed up.
MR. MCDANIEL: ORICL is the Oak Ridge Institute for --
MRS. CROWELL: Continued Learning.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- Continued Learning, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me a little bit about it so people that don't know --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- can understand what it is.
MRS. CROWELL: Right now, there are about 550 people who pay now roughly $100.00 a year, if you're going to have the whole year, although you can do $70.00 or $40.00, depending on when you join, and it's all volunteer except for two part-time employees who do the registration and produce the catalogs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We teach classes in 14 different areas. I don't think I can name them all, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: That's fine, that's fine.
MRS. CROWELL: -- it goes from science to history, and so on. You can take five classes per term. There are three terms --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we also have trips, usually five to seven per term. You pay extra, of course, for the trip. The latest trip that I took was down to the VW --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- place in Chattanooga, a fascinating place, very robotic-oriented. They took an old, I think it was a munitions or dynamite factory, and turned it into the VW Plant; Passat is what they make there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, just interesting, interesting trips. Some of them are overnight. The last overnight I took was to Charleston. That was a three-day trip, two overnights, and I hope to take one this next year to Nashville to see Edgar Meyer, who is our own local fellow, as you know --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- play along with Joshua Bell, and that is an overnight trip. So, it's an educationally-oriented group that is all volunteer, except for two employees.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and these courses, it's a wide gamut of --
MRS. CROWELL: It is. There's finance courses. There are retired UT professors that teach for us, voluntarily. Phil Hamlin, for example, was a philosophy professor. Spiva, what was his first name? Dr. Spiva was an economics professor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: So, it's a way for people who have been professors all their lives to still have a place to go. They love teaching us, they say, because we are on time and we ask a lot of questions.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, this is also a great venue for the retired professionals from Oak Ridge to stay active, and thinking and motivated --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and to keep their mind, their imagination going.
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct, and if they've had an avocation, it allows them to teach a course.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, we've had some wonderful courses taught by some of these. We've also had some wonderful courses where World War II veterans have been interviewed about their experiences --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and it takes place at Roane State. I don't --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- guess I said that, but it's just fascinating what people's hobbies have been and what they've collected.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We've got a guy who was an opera buff and who was a chemist out at the Lab, and --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- he teaches opera.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: It's just a wonderful thing. Anyway, I've been involved with that. I was president I guess for four years there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, and it's --
MRS. CROWELL: It's sort of --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- kind of a private entity that partners --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- with Roane State.
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Roane State allows us to have a place --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, to use their facilities.
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. We have an office and a small classroom, but we're also allowed to use their city room for larger classes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, so they've been very, very good about that. So, anyway, ORICL has been a big --
MR. MCDANIEL: A big part of your retirement.
MRS. CROWELL: -- part of my retirement. Also, the American Association of University Women.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: That's a group of, oh, anywhere from 60 to 120, it's varied over the years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- of women interested in education, particularly education for women and girls --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and also interested in pay equity for women and girls, so I've been involved in that. In fact, I've been president of that probably three times over my retirement, and next year I will be the state president.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: There's about 15 branches across Tennessee --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we get together once a year to talk about things. We have some interesting programs there, too, everything from finance to education to medical.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, thinking about the last 40 years or so in Oak Ridge, almost 50 years, I guess, in Oak Ridge, how have you seen it change? How have you seen the community change, and what things have remained the same that are either positives or negatives in your view?
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I guess the things that have changed has been more apartments and more semi-residential people as opposed to people who came here and stayed for the duration.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know if that's positive or negative, but that's a change that I've noticed. The other changes have been, gosh, all the fast food places. Does anybody cook at home anymore? I wonder sometimes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: A lot of those, and I guess the -- to me, this is a negative, but it may not be, the invitations to people's homes have gone away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Even organizations now meet in churches or in Roane State, or somewhere else, but entering people's homes is not as easy, I guess, as it once was. Now, if you're friends with people, that's a different thing --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but I'm talking about where organizations --
MR. MCDANIEL: You have a meeting --
MRS. CROWELL: -- met in people's homes --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- or something like that.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It just doesn't happen that way anymore. We're an older community. Maybe that's a negative. I don't know. ORICL has brought some people here, though, who wanted to retire here because of ORICL, and many people have stayed in the community because of ORICL --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but we are very much an older community. I recall back in the '90s, I guess it was, the early '90s, the Methodist Medical Center had a special group that did a study here in Oak Ridge, and they found at that time we had the demographics of Florida.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: We had such an older population that we sort of matched with Florida. I guess I have seen K-25, of course, closed --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I've seen what I would say to be a less scientific community and a more business-oriented community.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: How that happened was because of the different groups and different people that came here. I don't know that any of these are necessarily negative. If I felt that the community was on the downhill, I think, you know, I've got other places I could move to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: I still think it's a very -- it is a good place to live.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: You don't have traffic congestion. Oh, the beautiful Turnpike, that's really --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, that's nice.
MRS. CROWELL: -- nice, and I'm sure that that replaced infrastructure, the sewer and waterlines and such, were part of the original building of the city in the '40s.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah. Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, that gave us some new infrastructure.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: There's been more emphasis on the environmental over the years than there used to be.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Although we had, what do we call them, green fields --
MR. MCDANIEL: Greenways.
MRS. CROWELL: -- greenways early on, there's more emphasis on the environment now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Those would be the changes that I've seen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, not really. I commend the city of Oak Ridge for having people interviewed who have lived in the city, and have this as something in the Library that people can look at later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: I think the Manhattan Project, and later the Cold War years, are important eras of our entire U.S. community, and I think people need to know about this, and need to understand what happened and why it happened. I just recently read a book called Unbroken. I don't know if you've read it or not, but it's about an individual who grew up in California and was a runner, but later was in World War II and was in the Pacific, the ship went down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, yeah. It's the -- right, right. I'm familiar with it.
MRS. CROWELL: The ship went down, and then the Japanese ship got him, and then he was in war internment camps. The Japanese did not follow the Geneva Convention --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and had it not been for the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three days later, he would have been shot.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, the man is still alive, by the way, and he's 97 years old, I believe. Came back to the U.S., married, had children, worked with youth; that was just the best book I think I've ever read. It was written by Laura Hillenbrand, who also wrote --
MR. MCDANIEL: Seabiscuit.
MRS. CROWELL: -- Seabiscuit, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: If you haven't read it, be sure and read it.
MR. MCDANIEL: I will. I intend to.
MRS. CROWELL: It's the kind of book that you think nothing worse can happen to this man, but the next page, something worse does.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MRS. CROWELL: It's really good. So, anyway, I think that gives you a good feel for why we needed what happened, and how many lives were saved.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Right now, I'm reading a book on Truman, and that in itself is interesting, and how the decisions were made and how he didn't know when he became --
MR. MCDANIEL: President, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- President, he didn't know about the Manhattan Project, and how he had to come up to speed, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, that's an era that people need to understand, to understand why the U.S. did what it did to save lives.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I've enjoyed talking with you and learning a little bit about you.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. Thank you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
[End of Interview]
[*** Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at the request of Mrs. Crowell. The corresponding video, however, remains unchanged. ***]

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ORAL HISTORY OF MAYME ROBERSON CROWELL
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
December 20, 2012
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel, and today is December 20, 2012, and I am at the home of Mayme Roberson Crowell, here in Oak Ridge. Mrs. Crowell, thank you for taking time to speak with us --
MRS. CROWELL: Thank you for coming.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and if tomorrow is the end of the world, it's been nice knowing you.
MRS. CROWELL: True, true. I wonder if this CD, or whatever, will be finished by the end of the world.
MR. MCDANIEL: If the world ends tomorrow, no, it won't --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I can tell you that. Well, let's talk about you a little bit. Let's go back to the very beginning. Why don't you tell me about where you were born and raised, and something about your family.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I was born on a farm in Candler, North Carolina, which is near Asheville, North Carolina. My father was a school superintendent there. He had a farm on the side, which he had inherited from his father. I lived there until I graduated from high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: In Candler?
MRS. CROWELL: In Candler. I went to Candler Elementary School, and then Candler Elementary consolidated with Sand Hill School, and that became Enka High School, so I actually graduated and went the last two years to Enka High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's interesting that you were born in Candler. I interviewed a gentleman two days ago here in Oak Ridge who was born in Candler and raised on a farm.
MRS. CROWELL: Might it possibly have been Wayne Clark?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, it was Wayne. It was Wayne. It sure was.
MRS. CROWELL: Wayne Clark and I have some things in our background --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that we know about. Yeah, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, anyway, so you went to school there; what did your mom and dad do?
MRS. CROWELL: My mother was a teacher before my brother, who was five and a half years older than me, was born. After the children were born, she remained a stay-at-home housewife.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: My father was a school superintendent there in Buncombe County for 34 years. There is a high school named for him near Biltmore.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: It's the T.C. Roberson High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, that's an awfully nice legacy, isn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: I think so. Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said you had a brother.
MRS. CROWELL: I had a brother, five and a half years older than I. His name was Joe, and he became a dentist there in Biltmore --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- in North Carolina.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: He went to the University of North Carolina, I went to Duke, and there was always rivalry, as my mother said when they played basketball, "It doesn't matter who wins."
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated high school, and then you went to Duke?
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. What were you going to study?
MRS. CROWELL: Initially, my father wanted me to go to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. That was the women's college at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I rebelled somewhat at that. I wanted to go where I could get the opinions of the male, as well as the female, and I wanted to go to Duke. I, in high school, wrote an essay for the American Medical Association on the perils of socialized medicine --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I won the national -- so, I won a large scholarship, and my father said, "Okay, you can go to Duke."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: You have to understand my father's position. He had a son already in dental school at that point --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and there was only so much money. School superintendents didn't make a lot back then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you were able to go to Duke --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, and --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- but now what --
MRS. CROWELL: -- I lived through Sputnik in 1957. That was the year I graduated from high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: If you had any inkling to science, they wanted you to go into science at that time, and it was sort of a patriotic thing to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, at Duke, I spent two days taking exams as to which I should do, go into science or go into liberal arts --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and when I walked in the next day, they said, "You can do either. You'll be fine," so I decided to major in English, which I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: I had already met my future husband in high school, so I decided to graduate, for two reasons, in three years: so we could get married, and also to save my father lots of money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I worked in the Divinity School Library at Duke, met a lot of ministers, an interesting group of people, and graduated in 1960, even though I was in the Class of 1961.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right, and with an English degree.
MRS. CROWELL: With an English degree, that's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what did you do? Did you get a job?
MRS. CROWELL: I did. Cary was a little bedroom town back at that time, about 5,000 people. Would you believe it's over 100,000 now?
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, a little bedroom town next to Raleigh. While my husband was getting his master's degree, I taught English in high school, junior and senior English, at Cary High School.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- High School, which is now a junior high, I think.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It was a new school at that point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly. So, you taught English --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- high school English --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- while your husband was finishing his master's?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so he finishes his master's, and --
MRS. CROWELL: Right. His undergraduate degree was in nuclear engineering and his master's was in math, and he interviewed at the National Security Agency in D.C., a couple of other places, and Oak Ridge --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and he chose Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what year did you move to Oak Ridge?
MRS. CROWELL: I moved here in October of 1962 --
MR. MCDANIEL: In '62.
MRS. CROWELL: -- with a six-month-old child.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. So, tell me about coming to Oak Ridge. Had you ever been to Oak Ridge? Did you all come to interview?
MRS. CROWELL: He came to interview --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- I did not come.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: When I was in high school in the tenth grade, we had a field trip to Oak Ridge, and I still have my eradiated dime that I got at the old museum. [Note: Atomic Energy Museum]
MR. MCDANIEL: The old museum in Jefferson.
MRS. CROWELL: Right. So, I had been to Oak Ridge but I knew nothing about Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: When I came, the first night we were here, we were down at the old Holiday Inn and, if you recall, there was an outdoor movie theater --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah --
MRS. CROWELL: -- right across --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- the Skyway.
MRS. CROWELL: -- whatever it was called --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so you could see the movie from our room, and then we turned on the TV and, lo and behold, there was Cas Walker, and I thought, "Oh, my. I don't know about this place."
MR. MCDANIEL: How funny, how funny.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, we moved here and moved to a rental place in West Village on Bryn Mawr Circle, and then, subsequently, I had another child. With two children, somehow a two-bedroom home was just not quite big enough, so I started looking around and found a place at 108 Nebraska, and we bought there when our children were preschoolers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Now, did you and your husband, when you moved to Oak Ridge, did you think it was going to be long-term or short-term, or did you have any idea?
MRS. CROWELL: We really didn't have any idea. I can remember, though, about six months after we were here, he woke up in the middle of the night with this a-ha feeling, and he had solved some sort of mathematical problem in operations out at K-25.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I guess, at that point, we were thinking, "Well, I guess we'll stay here for a while."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and that's where he worked, he worked at K-25 --
MRS. CROWELL: At that time --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- at that time.
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. That Computer Center that's out there in front of K-25 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- which actually served --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and still serves, I guess -- I don't know if it's still -- anyway, it served all three plants at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. So, you had two children --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you bought a house on Nebraska, and by now it's late '60s, I imagine.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, it's '65. March of '65 is when we bought the house, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right. So, did you go to work right away, or --
MRS. CROWELL: No, no, I --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you just --
MRS. CROWELL: -- stayed home. Well, I went back to the University of Tennessee to get a Master's degree.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Some of my friends were going out once a week to play bridge. Well, I went out once a week to go to class.
MR. MCDANIEL: Go to class, right.
MRS. CROWELL: It took a while. I didn't get the degree until 1967, and then, after that, I still -- well, I worked part-time in a project out in Oliver Springs. It was a project that took people who had dropped out of elementary school, and we were trying to teach them basic information, and I was a counselor to the group. We had about 25 people, and when Margaret Mead came here --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she chastised Oak Ridgers for not helping people outside of Oak Ridge, and I wanted to jump up and say to her, "There were a few of us who were working outside of Oak Ridge to help people."
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: That program ended. There was something called the Manpower Development Program, and I guess Congress stopped it, and then another program came in called the JDPA, the Jobs Development Program.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, that ended, and, when that ended, I stayed home another year, and then I applied to ORAU, Oak Ridge Associated Universities --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I worked at the Training and Technology Project; that was a skills training program.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was TAT, wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: TAT, a skills training program. We had glass blowing, electronics, physical testing, machining, drafting --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- a lot of skills, and a lot of young people, men --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because as the people at Y-12 said, "There is no change room for the women," but we did get a few women in --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- in the electronics area --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and, later, we got some women even into the welding area.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, TAT was a training program --
MRS. CROWELL: Correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and it was designed, and you can tell me more about this, but as I recall it was kind of a high-end vocational program --
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: It was for maybe people who had just gotten out of high school, or had been in the workplace a little while and didn't have much direction really, is that correct?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. It all started when a fellow that worked for ORAU, who is now deceased, Wendell Russell, worked with the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that looked at the situation where Y-12 was now not doing any weapons work, per se, but they had all of these master machinists, welders, other people who could teach, and perhaps the facilities could be used.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, it was a joint operation between the Department of Labor and the Department of Energy --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- to use the Department of Energy's facilities to help the Department of Labor to put people in specific jobs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Not everyone was a graduate of high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: We had a GED program there that helped people to become graduates, but the training itself was very technically oriented toward math and toward the particular skill set that they were learning.
MR. MCDANIEL: You probably had some of the best master craftsmen in the world there --
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, we did.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- teaching these courses, didn't they?
MRS. CROWELL: We did, and they were all fellows --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but interesting fellows that had, as you say, been master craftsmen, and these students, to me, they were kids, although I was young at the time --
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- were learning from --
MR. MCDANIEL: The best.
MRS. CROWELL: -- the masters, from the best.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Right, and we placed these people. I worked in guidance and placement, and then later as a research associate, but we placed these people in jobs all around the country.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Y-12 didn't hire them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Didn't hire them? Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Many of them came back to Y-12 later on --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but they were placed in shipbuilding places in Norfolk or in Mississippi. We filled every glass blowing job you could think of, and we stopped glass blowing, but machining, welding, electronics, physical testing all went on continually.
MR. MCDANIEL: These jobs were good, high-paying, I mean --
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, they were good, high-paying jobs.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- good jobs.
MRS. CROWELL: In fact, I mentioned that later I became a research associate, and one of the tasks that I had, along with two or three others, was to interview people who had gone through the program, and we interviewed them five years later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: We also had records. We could get their Social Security records to see how much they were earning and such, and what we found was that their earnings in paying back to the IRS paid for their training.
MR. MCDANIEL: Their training, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, these students didn't have to pay for this training? It was provided by the government?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. Now, later on, there were some smaller government entities, such as states, or the city of Chicago that paid their way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, for some.
MRS. CROWELL: -- for some of them because they had to travel here and such.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how many students did you have, I mean for the --
MRS. CROWELL: At any --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- how long did the program last, first?
MRS. CROWELL: -- I believe about six years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we had at any one time probably 150 students there. Overall, I would say well over 2,500 graduates.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: What happened eventually is the federal government had us looking for what I used to call “pink-eyed elephants with one foot.” I mean there were so many requirements that we had to meet, and we had to travel. I interviewed people around the area to come. We had to travel, and finding the people that the government, the Department of Labor in this case --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- wanted to train became just an impossible situation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Because they had very specific ideas of who they wanted for this program --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and how could you find those people?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, staff went out and interviewed and tried to find them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Situation was prohibitive.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: But it lasted, and we did a good job for a lot of people, and a lot of people earned their GEDs, and there were a lot of people who came back to Oak Ridge. I've even met some of these people --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- who came back to Oak Ridge after working somewhere else, and then they were hired by Y-12 later, when work --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- became available.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said it lasted about six years. What timeframe was this, late '60s, early '70s? Was it in the '70s?
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct. It was about '66 or so, through '73 or '74, or something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, and it was an excellent program. It helped a lot of people in a lot of ways, not just to get a job but improved their morale, their ego. They really could do this, you know?
MR. MCDANIEL: Give them confidence in life --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, they really could do this.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I guess. Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We kept a lot of records. We tested those poor people. Oh, we tested them, and we were required to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It was just the requirement.
MR. MCDANIEL: You were working for ORAU at the time.
MRS. CROWELL: I was.
MR. MCDANIEL: They were managing this program --
MRS. CROWELL: Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- is that what it was?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, actually, ORAU and Union Carbide --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but I worked for ORAU, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: As I say, we kept a lot of records, and I imagine ORAU still has those records.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was housed at Y-12, is that correct?
MRS. CROWELL: It was, in a building to the east, 9703, or something like that. All I remember is when you walked in the Y-12 gate, it was like there was a wind tunnel coming down the other side in the winter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Oh, it was so cold. Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so cold.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, what did you do when that program ended --
MRS. CROWELL: Well --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- professionally?
MRS. CROWELL: -- professionally, my husband took the job of computer center director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and we left in August of '75. I guess I should say during those years that I worked at TAT, I worked part-time. I was not a full-time person…
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because I would go pick up my children, and in the ORAU Human Resources Department, there was a lady there, Margaret Smith, and every time I would walk in, she would say, "Are you coming or are you going?" because I took off December, and I took off the summer to be with my children.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I had only worked at ORAU part-time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, my husband took the job and he had worked at Union Carbide for many years. He was assured that he would have his job when he came back. In my case, I had only worked part-time so I was not assured --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so that was just the way it was then.
[Phone ringing]
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Is that me or you? Somebody's --
MRS. CROWELL: That's mine --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- Oh.
MRS. CROWELL: -- I think, over there --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that's okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: That's just a text. Anyway, when he took the job --
MR. MCDANIEL: So, in '75, he got a job --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yes. Actually, it was the Department of Energy who sent us to Vienna Austria. He was, how to say it, moved there, or so to speak.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, so we left with the children, who were early teens at that time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- 13 and 15, and lived near the Wienerwald for two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, what was the name of that again?
MRS. CROWELL: Wienerwald, the Vienna Woods.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay?
MR. MCDANIEL: I wanted to ask that for my transcriptionists. They're going to want to know that.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I understand. We learned German, although my husband's work was always in English, but we lived, what we call, on the economy. We didn't live with other U.S. citizens. We wanted to have the experience, I suppose, of the --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so, we lived on elf Dirmark Steingasse (German), which is 11, by the way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and Dirmark Steinegasse (German) is just the name of a street.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, the children went to the American International School, which is an excellent school with young teachers, just really active with the kids, and took fieldtrips and so forth. I had my parents send over Euro passes for the girls and myself. So, in the breaks, the summer and the winter break, we would travel, oh, out from Vienna to Italy, or out from Vienna to Spain, or out from Vienna to --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and the whole family traveled to England and then Scotland, and Wales one time, and another summer we went to Norway and Sweden, and such. So, we had just a wonderful experience there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
[Side Conversation]
MRS. CROWELL: Sorry.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's all right. That's quite all right. So, how long were you there?
MRS. CROWELL: Two years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Two years?
MRS. CROWELL: Right. Did a lot of traveling. The school took trips to Russia. I went with my older daughter and my husband went with the younger daughter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: So, we had a lot of travel experiences.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: My husband and I went to Turkey once.
MR. MCDANIEL: That was an eventful two years, wasn't it?
MRS. CROWELL: It was, and we met a lot of interesting people at the IAEA from different places.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: My husband's boss was from Russia, and there was something called a UN Women's Guild, so you could meet others. Now, I did not work there. I couldn't work there. Austria doesn't allow the spouse of a foreign worker to work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I just was the travel agent, and learned German so I could put food on the table and take the kids to the doctor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, my goodness. So, that sounds very exciting.
MRS. CROWELL: It was.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet it was a great experience for your kids, especially at that age, because they were old enough to be able to appreciate it, weren't they?
MRS. CROWELL: They were. The younger one was a little young, she was 11 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but they were entering what I call in children growing up, girls especially, the fluff area --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- where girls get so interested in, "How I look and what I say," or, "Are the boys watching me?" --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- that my children didn't really enter that thing. They were too busy going from place to place --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and meeting new people. It was an American International School, but they weren't all Americans. In fact, they still correspond with a Swedish girl --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and hope to go visit her sometime. She visited us here --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow. Wow --
MRS. CROWELL: -- so it was fun.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- that's great.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so you stayed there for two years, and then I guess his job was up or over, or --
MRS. CROWELL: Well, he --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- decided to make a change?
MRS. CROWELL: -- would have liked to have stayed longer, but I felt that the children, who were at that point in the ninth and tenth grades, needed the experience of high school here in order to enter college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I was very insistent on our coming back, but he would have liked to have stayed. He could have stayed up to five years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and actually "retired" from there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: But no, we didn't do that. We came back --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, you came back.
MRS. CROWELL: -- by way of Greece, by the way --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- because our goods were on a ship that was gonna take a month to get here, so we decided to go to Greece --
MR. MCDANIEL: To Greece, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so the children got back and they had these beautiful tans, and they were asked, "Where did you get your tan?" and they'd whisper, "Greece," because everybody had gone to Myrtle Beach or other places.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: It was a bit hard for them to re-assimilate here, especially with girls. You have boys, I think. But with girls, they sort of form cliques, and you have to sort of work into those cliques once again.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: But some of the girls accepted them, and it was -- now, for me, it was rough because our shipment on the way back on the boat, or the big ship, had a hole in the ship's container, so our things were wet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MRS. CROWELL: I had to go through things item by item for insurance purposes, and how much was this, and it took all of eight or nine months to get that --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- straightened out.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, my husband was back at work.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, when you moved back to Oak Ridge, he went back to work for --
MRS. CROWELL: At that time, it was for the Physics Division within the Computer Center, and they served ORNL, K-25, and Y-12.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Where did you all move? Where did you live?
MRS. CROWELL: Well --
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you still have your house?
MRS. CROWELL: -- we still had the house. In fact, it might be interesting to note that the brother of --
MR. MCDANIEL: That was at 108 Nebraska?
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. The brother of Pat Postma was graduating from the University of North Carolina with a doctorate in math just as we left, so he and his wife, Janelle -- Janelle Dunigan she was, and Tom Postma -- rented our house while we were gone --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so, when we came back, I think they built over in Briarcliff or somewhere, and later had a child, who was a very good tennis player.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh good, good, so you moved back into your house on Nebraska --
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and you spent nine months trying to dry everything out --
MRS. CROWELL: -- and fill out paperwork.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- so to speak, fill out paperwork. Your husband went back to work, your kids got back in school.
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, it took you a year to settle back in --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- so to speak.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and then I showed up at ORAU's door once again, and they said, "Yes, we have work for you to do." So, I worked in a program called the Assessment and Field Support Program. It was DOE-sponsored, and most of my work had to do with research in both manpower development and some of it in technical fields, such as physics and such.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: But then, later -- I was still working part-time, by the way.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I worked part-time until my children finished high school.
MR. MCDANIEL: High school.
MRS. CROWELL: I used to tell people, "I work part-time not so much for me, but I didn't want to miss the children growing up."
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, of course, of course.
MRS. CROWELL: So, I was still working part-time, and they allowed me to work. ORAU was a very good employer; allowed me to work part-time. I had the best of both worlds --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so I applaud them for that. Now, we part-timers did band together once and tried to get some benefits, and we did get them --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but then, by that time, I was ready to work full-time.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh okay, I see, I see. So, you worked part-time for a while, and then, when the kids graduated or got out of high school --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- you decided you wanted to work full-time.
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was it a new project, or the same project?
MRS. CROWELL: It was the same for a while, and then, later, it was a new -- well, it was a year-old project, I guess. They had brought here a fellow, Boyd Schultz, whose wife actually was from the area and who was one of Admiral Rickover's boys -- MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who started the program which was the Technical Assistance Program for Safety, Health, and Quality Assurance, TAPSHQA, for short, and it was a program -- back during the days of the Tiger Teams and the technical safety appraisals, we supplied people to assess DOE facilities.
MR. MCDANIEL: Explain the Tiger Teams.
MRS. CROWELL: Tiger Teams were teams that went into DOE contractor locations and checked on all phases of their operations, from the physics, the chemistry, the quality assurance, the industrial safety, on and on. There were about 13 people on each Tiger Team. Then, they wrote a report for the Department of Energy, and, in this report, there were certain things that needed to be "fixed" or there were certain things that were --
MR. MCDANIEL: Efficient.
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah, that were deficient, or other things that were exceptional, though --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so they tried to look at all sides of the operation.
MR. MCDANIEL: This was in the '80s --
MRS. CROWELL: This was in the mid --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- mid-'80s.
MRS. CROWELL: -- '80s. It began about '84, I think, or so.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, Boyd had already retired from Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, and he was ready to retire here, so ORAU brought in a gentleman from Louisiana State University, Dr. John Courtney, one summer, and he taught me all I needed to know about nuclear criticality safety, so I became "a nuclear criticality safety professional."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: There aren't too many of those in this world --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- and one of the problems was that most of them were getting ready to retire, so we needed to train more people in order for many of the Department of Energy facilities to continue.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, anyway, he "trained" me, and then I became the director of the program, and the program supplied engineers and scientists and technicians to practically all of the DOE and DOE contractors across the U.S.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I traveled a lot with this, going to the contractor sites and to the Department of Energy regional offices.
MR. MCDANIEL: But by now, your kids were in college or out --
MRS. CROWELL: They were --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- on their own.
MRS. CROWELL: -- in college. They were in college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: One graduated in -- well, let me think a minute -- '84, and the other one in '85 from college.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: The older one in '84 graduated from Duke, and the younger one in '85 graduated from the University of South Carolina, and then both of them went on to graduate school after that, so they were --
MR. MCDANIEL: They were gone --
MRS. CROWELL: -- out of the nest.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- out of the nest, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Out of the nest, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you felt comfortable traveling --
MRS. CROWELL: Yes, right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- at that point, because of the kids, anyway?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, right, and in some cases I would travel where the kids were.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the reason I traveled was to find out what these contractors and regional offices needed in terms of short-term people or consultants. Short-term for them, by the way, was anywhere from three weeks to five years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- okay? Did a lot of traveling to D.C., as well - to both of the Germantown and the Forrestall building.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I would also travel to professional societies -- the American Nuclear Society, American Physics Society -- because I needed to beef up my cadre of individuals who could be supplied to do this particular work.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now let me ask you a question: go back and tell me the name, what he taught you that summer, what was that?
MRS. CROWELL: Nuclear criticality safety.
MR. MCDANIEL: What exactly is that? I mean what --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- would the person that became educated in that field, what is their area of expertise.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. Well, let's start with the fact that you want a criticality to occur in a reactor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It's contained, and that's it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: But there are a lot of places that a criticality can occur that you don't want it to happen, such as in a facility where you are producing uranium fuel, or plutonium --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- or putting together weapons, or whatever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the nuclear criticality safety person actually is the person who surveyed these facilities, and in most cases, they were production facilities --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- to determine that they were safe from a criticality ever occurring. At the time I became one, there were probably 75 people in all of the U.S. --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who did this sort of thing, of which more than half of them were going to retire in the next two to five years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the Department of Energy realized they had a manpower problem --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and they were trying to find ways to alleviate this.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, in your position here as the director, did you actually do training or did you run a program that trained, oversaw a program that trained?
MRS. CROWELL: I did not train. I did not oversee a program that trained. What I did was become one and work with the people that were already in the field --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and help them to determine how best to train.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, how to say it, there are computer codes connected with this, and we did conduct some of that code training --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that was it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay. All right, so how long did you do that job?
MRS. CROWELL: I was there until 1998, when I retired.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay. So, you retired in '98.
MRS. CROWELL: Right, in March of '98.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, let's go back when you first came to Oak Ridge. Let's talk about Oak Ridge as a community, as a city.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: Talk about, a little bit -- I know you were involved with your kids and your work part-time, but I imagine you were involved in the community, as well, some.
MRS. CROWELL: I was, and with the church --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- which was also involved in the community. What I remember about those days was I had young children, and I remember my church, you could go and they would take care of your children while you went somewhere for an hour, and I thought that was the best thing that ever happened.
MR. MCDANIEL: I think they call that Mother's Day Out now --
MRS. CROWELL: -- oh, they didn't call it that then.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- or something.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know what it was called --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: At the Y, the Y had a newcomer's group, and I went to that. Still know a lot of people from --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, from that --
MRS. CROWELL: -- that particular - Roberta Sommerfield, for example, was in that particular group. So, the Y helped some of us newcomers to become oriented to the city and learn about the past.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, still sticking with the Y, there was a time back then when the Y was in an old barracks building and they wanted to build a new one. We had this study done. I was on the Y board for a while, and we had this study done and they said, "This community can't support a new building," and it made us all very angry, and we said, "We'll show you." So, we did, and we who were on the board went out to individual homes and told them what our needs were, and how we'd like to have a new Y, and then Nancy Stanley went to the Kresge Foundation and they gave us money, and the Y building is here now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: So, we showed those people that made that study.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Anyway, that was my experiences with the Y. I didn't join some of the other groups, like bridge, but I did help to set up the Nearly New, which Marlys Bigelow spearheaded. But, it worked out well. Other things at that time were AAUW, the American Association of University Women. There was a lady, Evelyn Ellingson, who now lives at NHC --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- who was sort of my mentor to join that group. That group's purpose is education; in particular, it's education beyond the high school level, and, in particular, it's education for graduate degrees. For example, Rachael Carson was given money for her environmental work from AAUW. Marie Curie, AAUW bought her uranium that she used.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: So it has a long history. Back in the 1800s, 1880s, was when it began.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, there was a chapter in Oak Ridge?
MRS. CROWELL: Yes, it's an Oak Ridge Branch. We still have one. I've been president off and on during several years, and right now, where we place our money is we give scholarships to the Roane State Community College women who are re-entering. They have to be 25 years old and re-entering the workforce. This year we had 63 applications of which we had to choose 4 --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we also give each year $500.00 to the national association, which supplies graduate work scholarships. So, anyway, AAUW became an organization that I belong to, and I guess we were all from different places from around the country, and it was interesting. You had friends that you met, either through your children or church or work or whatever, and we'd get together for dinner parties, maybe 8 or 12 people --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- a dinner party, and it was interesting learning about how others grew up, came here, what they did here, and so forth.
MR. MCDANIEL: I'm sure --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- I'm sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- you made your own entertainment at that point.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, are you talking about in the '60s?
MRS. CROWELL: I'm talking about in the '60s and the '70s, yeah --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, '60s and '70s.
MRS. CROWELL: -- the early '70s, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: Right. The church that we belonged to decided to build an educational building back at that time, and I can remember a dinner party where we had people, some were for and some were against and it was a very contentious --
MR. MCDANIEL: A contentious dinner.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but that's just the way it was.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was that common, the dinner parties, because I've had other people tell me that they did that, as well, they had dinner parties.
MRS. CROWELL: It seemed to me, at least among the people that I associated with, it was quite common.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: There weren't as many restaurants then. I mean we didn't have all these fast food places --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and people entertained in their homes more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: One of the things that I found most interesting about Oak Ridge, you would see the outside of the home, and it probably was a '40s put-together-quickly home, and you go inside and, "Oh my goodness," the paintings, the furniture, it was just --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, it was a D house that was, you know --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- inside was, you know --
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, just beautiful, beautiful, absolutely gorgeous.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- wow.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the dinner parties were a good way of meeting other people, and there were always these parties at the Country Club when somebody would be leaving from the computer section, and they came and they went like you wouldn't believe.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: One of my fondest memories of that is there was a lady and her husband, who later ended up at IAEA - Marion and Jim Gilchrest, they had ten children -- nine boys and one girl.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right.
MRS. CROWELL: This lady showed up at those dinner parties, fingernails polished, oh, beautiful hair, too, and I thought, "Ten children, how do you do it?" I was frazzled with two.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my goodness, my goodness. That's probably the only time she got to get out.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, I don't know. I remember in Vienna, when we went and she invited us over, they had an apartment that had been a chemistry factory, and the boardroom table was their dining room table.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Oh my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: I guess in a way that was one way that they could educate all those children, because the IAEA did give you money to send your children either to school or if you wanted to send them back to the U.S. --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- to college, yeah, and he stayed on and went to UNIDO after that, so another UN organization that did the same thing, so that was good for their family --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh sure, absolutely.
MRS. CROWELL: -- very good for their family, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: After you came back from Vienna, your daughters were in high school --
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- talk a little bit about the schools here in Oak Ridge.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay, yeah. One of the reasons we came to Oak Ridge was the schools. When we looked for a house, we thought about moving outside of Oak Ridge, and it was the school system that made us stay here. Linden Elementary had just opened up, and that was an excellent school. In fact, the PE teacher lives next door to us now. She's retired, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- anyway, then junior high was not --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that Miss Hale?
MRS. CROWELL: -- yes, Holt Hale --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- Shirley Holt Hale.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah. Junior high, we sort of missed by being away --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so, in fact, we sort of missed it totally because, when my children came back, they knew German, and they went to the high school to take German --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I see.
MRS. CROWELL: -- even though one of them was in junior high, so she didn't spend that much time at the junior high.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MRS. CROWELL: But, anyway, so I guess I'd have to talk more about the high school. I really appreciated the teachers there. I could name a few of them, especially this Bonita Albert and her math. Oh, my goodness. That woman would go 6:30, 7:00 in the morning, and if your child wanted --
MR. MCDANIEL: Help?
MRS. CROWELL: -- some extra tutoring, she was right there to help you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: There was a biology teacher, whose name I can't think of right now, that was just wonderful, too. Barbara Bennett was a teacher who set up a program called “You and the Constitution,” or something like that. It was a special class, and my younger daughter, that was what she wanted, I mean it was just --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- like it was a class made to order for her, and got her into the area of the law. My younger daughter got her law degree from UNC later on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, the older daughter was just turned on by science, and people like Dewey Bilbrey and somebody that taught with him that I can't remember --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and the math people just really turned her on. She later got a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Virginia.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: So, the schools just made learning fun, and interesting and enjoyable --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, and prepared them for --
MRS. CROWELL: -- well, prepared them well, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- yeah, prepared them well.
MRS. CROWELL: When my older daughter entered Duke, she went with credits from the AP course. When my younger daughter went to Center College, that was where she went before --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she went to the University of South Carolina --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- she was well prepared, too, and I can't say enough about the school system. It's just wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, it's interesting, and I'll take a break here to talk about that. My oldest son is a freshman this year. When we were meeting, they had meeting with the parents for upcoming freshmen, you know, incoming freshmen, and it was really interesting the way that they talked about their four years and what to expect each year, and one of the things that really stood out for me was by the time the student graduated high school, they wanted their first year of college to be easy. They wanted them to be so prepared and so well prepared, that there are enough issues that a student leaving home and going to college for the first year has to face; they didn't want them to have to worry about academics so much, and that's what they said, many students have said, "My freshman year of college compared to my junior and senior year of high school was easy," you know?
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, I thought that was really interesting.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, they do prepare them well, I think --
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah.
MRS. CROWELL: -- at least in both of my daughters' cases.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: They prepared them well.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. So, after they left and your kids went off to college, were you still involved in community activities?
MRS. CROWELL: I was, I was. I continued with AAUW, still continued with my church, First United Methodist, and was with the Y for a while, not the whole time but for a while. Yes, so those were my major activities.
MR. MCDANIEL: You said you retired in '98?
MRS. CROWELL: I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, so what have you done since retirement?
MRS. CROWELL: I've become a professional volunteer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right? Talk about that a little bit.
MRS. CROWELL: Well, let's see. Early on, it was just before I retired that ORICL began.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know if you know the history of that or not, but they sent out a letter if you were interested, and they thought they'd have about 50 people down at the old Roane State place on the Turnpike, and over 250 showed up.
MR. MCDANIEL: ORICL is the Oak Ridge Institute for --
MRS. CROWELL: Continued Learning.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- Continued Learning, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me a little bit about it so people that don't know --
MRS. CROWELL: Okay.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- can understand what it is.
MRS. CROWELL: Right now, there are about 550 people who pay now roughly $100.00 a year, if you're going to have the whole year, although you can do $70.00 or $40.00, depending on when you join, and it's all volunteer except for two part-time employees who do the registration and produce the catalogs.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We teach classes in 14 different areas. I don't think I can name them all, but --
MR. MCDANIEL: That's fine, that's fine.
MRS. CROWELL: -- it goes from science to history, and so on. You can take five classes per term. There are three terms --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we also have trips, usually five to seven per term. You pay extra, of course, for the trip. The latest trip that I took was down to the VW --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- place in Chattanooga, a fascinating place, very robotic-oriented. They took an old, I think it was a munitions or dynamite factory, and turned it into the VW Plant; Passat is what they make there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, just interesting, interesting trips. Some of them are overnight. The last overnight I took was to Charleston. That was a three-day trip, two overnights, and I hope to take one this next year to Nashville to see Edgar Meyer, who is our own local fellow, as you know --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- play along with Joshua Bell, and that is an overnight trip. So, it's an educationally-oriented group that is all volunteer, except for two employees.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, and these courses, it's a wide gamut of --
MRS. CROWELL: It is. There's finance courses. There are retired UT professors that teach for us, voluntarily. Phil Hamlin, for example, was a philosophy professor. Spiva, what was his first name? Dr. Spiva was an economics professor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: So, it's a way for people who have been professors all their lives to still have a place to go. They love teaching us, they say, because we are on time and we ask a lot of questions.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, this is also a great venue for the retired professionals from Oak Ridge to stay active, and thinking and motivated --
MRS. CROWELL: Right, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- and to keep their mind, their imagination going.
MRS. CROWELL: That's correct, and if they've had an avocation, it allows them to teach a course.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, we've had some wonderful courses taught by some of these. We've also had some wonderful courses where World War II veterans have been interviewed about their experiences --
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and it takes place at Roane State. I don't --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- guess I said that, but it's just fascinating what people's hobbies have been and what they've collected.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: We've got a guy who was an opera buff and who was a chemist out at the Lab, and --
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: -- he teaches opera.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, my goodness.
MRS. CROWELL: It's just a wonderful thing. Anyway, I've been involved with that. I was president I guess for four years there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay, and it's --
MRS. CROWELL: It's sort of --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- kind of a private entity that partners --
MRS. CROWELL: -- yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: -- with Roane State.
MRS. CROWELL: That is correct.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Roane State allows us to have a place --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, to use their facilities.
MRS. CROWELL: -- right. We have an office and a small classroom, but we're also allowed to use their city room for larger classes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: Yeah, so they've been very, very good about that. So, anyway, ORICL has been a big --
MR. MCDANIEL: A big part of your retirement.
MRS. CROWELL: -- part of my retirement. Also, the American Association of University Women.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: That's a group of, oh, anywhere from 60 to 120, it's varied over the years --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- of women interested in education, particularly education for women and girls --
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and also interested in pay equity for women and girls, so I've been involved in that. In fact, I've been president of that probably three times over my retirement, and next year I will be the state president.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: There's about 15 branches across Tennessee --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, okay.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and we get together once a year to talk about things. We have some interesting programs there, too, everything from finance to education to medical.
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, thinking about the last 40 years or so in Oak Ridge, almost 50 years, I guess, in Oak Ridge, how have you seen it change? How have you seen the community change, and what things have remained the same that are either positives or negatives in your view?
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. I guess the things that have changed has been more apartments and more semi-residential people as opposed to people who came here and stayed for the duration.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: I don't know if that's positive or negative, but that's a change that I've noticed. The other changes have been, gosh, all the fast food places. Does anybody cook at home anymore? I wonder sometimes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: A lot of those, and I guess the -- to me, this is a negative, but it may not be, the invitations to people's homes have gone away.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Even organizations now meet in churches or in Roane State, or somewhere else, but entering people's homes is not as easy, I guess, as it once was. Now, if you're friends with people, that's a different thing --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but I'm talking about where organizations --
MR. MCDANIEL: You have a meeting --
MRS. CROWELL: -- met in people's homes --
MR. MCDANIEL: -- or something like that.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: It just doesn't happen that way anymore. We're an older community. Maybe that's a negative. I don't know. ORICL has brought some people here, though, who wanted to retire here because of ORICL, and many people have stayed in the community because of ORICL --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: -- but we are very much an older community. I recall back in the '90s, I guess it was, the early '90s, the Methodist Medical Center had a special group that did a study here in Oak Ridge, and they found at that time we had the demographics of Florida.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MRS. CROWELL: We had such an older population that we sort of matched with Florida. I guess I have seen K-25, of course, closed --
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and I've seen what I would say to be a less scientific community and a more business-oriented community.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: How that happened was because of the different groups and different people that came here. I don't know that any of these are necessarily negative. If I felt that the community was on the downhill, I think, you know, I've got other places I could move to.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: I still think it's a very -- it is a good place to live.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: You don't have traffic congestion. Oh, the beautiful Turnpike, that's really --
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, that's nice.
MRS. CROWELL: -- nice, and I'm sure that that replaced infrastructure, the sewer and waterlines and such, were part of the original building of the city in the '40s.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah. Sure, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: So, that gave us some new infrastructure.
MR. MCDANIEL: Exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: There's been more emphasis on the environmental over the years than there used to be.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MRS. CROWELL: Although we had, what do we call them, green fields --
MR. MCDANIEL: Greenways.
MRS. CROWELL: -- greenways early on, there's more emphasis on the environment now.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Those would be the changes that I've seen.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Well, is there anything else you want to talk about?
MRS. CROWELL: Well, not really. I commend the city of Oak Ridge for having people interviewed who have lived in the city, and have this as something in the Library that people can look at later.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: I think the Manhattan Project, and later the Cold War years, are important eras of our entire U.S. community, and I think people need to know about this, and need to understand what happened and why it happened. I just recently read a book called Unbroken. I don't know if you've read it or not, but it's about an individual who grew up in California and was a runner, but later was in World War II and was in the Pacific, the ship went down.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh yeah, yeah. It's the -- right, right. I'm familiar with it.
MRS. CROWELL: The ship went down, and then the Japanese ship got him, and then he was in war internment camps. The Japanese did not follow the Geneva Convention --
MR. MCDANIEL: Right exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- and had it not been for the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, three days later, he would have been shot.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Now, the man is still alive, by the way, and he's 97 years old, I believe. Came back to the U.S., married, had children, worked with youth; that was just the best book I think I've ever read. It was written by Laura Hillenbrand, who also wrote --
MR. MCDANIEL: Seabiscuit.
MRS. CROWELL: -- Seabiscuit, right.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: If you haven't read it, be sure and read it.
MR. MCDANIEL: I will. I intend to.
MRS. CROWELL: It's the kind of book that you think nothing worse can happen to this man, but the next page, something worse does.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh my.
MRS. CROWELL: It's really good. So, anyway, I think that gives you a good feel for why we needed what happened, and how many lives were saved.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MRS. CROWELL: Right now, I'm reading a book on Truman, and that in itself is interesting, and how the decisions were made and how he didn't know when he became --
MR. MCDANIEL: President, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- President, he didn't know about the Manhattan Project, and how he had to come up to speed, and so on.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MRS. CROWELL: So, that's an era that people need to understand, to understand why the U.S. did what it did to save lives.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure, exactly, exactly.
MRS. CROWELL: -- so, yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: All right. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. I've enjoyed talking with you and learning a little bit about you.
MRS. CROWELL: Okay. Thank you.
MR. MCDANIEL: Okay.
[End of Interview]
[*** Editor’s Note: Portions of this transcript have been edited at the request of Mrs. Crowell. The corresponding video, however, remains unchanged. ***]